Biden Flap Redux: Netanyahu Tries To Prove That Jews Are Actually Stupid

NO, IT'S NOT LEVITTOWN

A little more than a week has transpired since visiting Vice President Biden -- as loyal an American supporter of Israel as there has ever been -- was sandbagged with the announcement by Prime Minister Netanyahu's interior minister that 1,600 new households will be built in the occupied West Bank.

For students of U.S.-Israel diplomatic history, the subsequent fallout has been numbingly predictable.

When no one bought the contention that Netanyahu had been blindsided, the usual suspects jumped into the fray. You know, people like Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman, who take any criticism of Israel by the U.S. to being anti-semitic but reached a new low in calling General David Petraeus a "Jew baiter."

Why? Because the general warned that there is a growing perception among Israel's Arab neighbors that the U.S. is incapable of standing up to Israel and is losing faith in Washington's promises to do just that.

Then there is the inevitable Palestinian response: Stepped up demonstrations, pity partying and the stray rocket attack from Gaza.

As I noted here, Israel has increasingly portrayed itself as the Jewish mother in the oft-told joke who prefers to sit in the dark rather than replacing a burned-out light bulb since Barack Obama became president because he -- and Biden, as well -- have leavened the usual American ring kissing with some fairly strong language about the repeated Israeli backsliding on settlements that are illegal by any calculus except the Likud government's.

But this is not yet another lover's quarrel, as some pundits have put it, and what is really frightening is that it is becoming increasingly obvious that Netanyahu is not in control of his government and continues to suck up to ultra-nationalist and religious right wingers who are even more extreme than he is.

As Jeffrey Goldberg notes, Israel has been on a roll in alienating countries that it has no business alienating, notably the U.S., without whose weapons, aid and protection it might not survive.

"The problem is that Israel is paying the price as well," says Goldberg. "America can afford stupid politicians. Israel can't."

Nobody expects Israel to blink first, but it's almost as if the Netanyahu government is trying to prove that Jews are actually stupid.

Charges that Obama, let alone Biden, who is a Zionist in all but name, have turned against Israel are ludicrous. Israel has squandered the moral high ground and it is incumbent on both men to declare that America will not when it comes to relations with its long most-favored nation and important strategic ally.